Barack Obama

Betting against Barack Obama is always a losing proposition, but he’s in a race against history that no Democratic president has won in 74 years. Only twice in American history has there ever been three or more consecutive Democratic Administrations. Both occurrences happened about century apart. Fourteen years into the 21st Century, no party has held the White House for three consecutive terms and the odds are against it happening in 2016. Presidential elections in this country turn on one thing and one thing only: presidential performance. Barack Obama must accomplish something significant in a second term if Hillary Clinton is to have a second bite of the apple. If he doesn’t, the likelihood of her winning the presidency diminishes significantly and the permanence of health reform is jeopardized.

What is far more likely, unfortunately, is another Bush Presidency, which would be a disastrous apocalypse for everyone not firmly ensconced in the ruling class. Reaping the whirlwind of a Jeb Bush presidency makes me shudder. The reactionary agents of intolerance would be empowered to employ fear, ignorance, and toxic racial stereotypes as the building blocks of public policy. The predators of Wall Street would be unleashed to seek whomever they may devour. Finally, like his father and brother before him, Jeb would, “Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war.” If you believe in prayer, now would be a good time to gather all the “prayer warriors” you know and pray for Barack Obama. He needs all the help he can get.

Mitt Romney is the living embodiment of a President from Hollywood central casting. His all-American good looks and patrician bearing are reassuring to some folk and harkens back to the halcyon days of yesteryear when times were simple and dark people, women and gays knew their proper places. Following the lead of Congressional Republicans in racializing Obama’s policy agenda, Mitt Romney’s strategists, conscious of their diminishing odds of winning this election, elected to frame their horse’s throwback candidacy in a way that intentionally stokes a sense of white racial resentment. President Obama’s every thought, word and deed is construed as a racial attack on God-fearing, taxpaying white Americans. Whites are cast as the victims in this alternate Republican universe and Mitt Romney is the savior they’ve been praying for. It is a lie, like everything the modern Republican Party stands for. It doesn’t matter how confidently Mitt Romney recites his lies. A confident lie is still a lie. Remain calm. There is nothing that transpired yesterday between the contenders to America’s throne that should disturb any Obama partisan.

Let’s review. In the span of 50 years, we’ve gone from, “Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever,” to the eleventh great grandson of the first enslaved African serving as President of the United States. God is speaking through this recent revelation in Obama’s family tree. Can you hear him? I believe in my sanctified soul that Barack Obama’s miraculous rise to the presidency was predestined. The African ancestry traceable through his “white” mother shatters the myth of white supremacy and cleanses the stain of chattel slavery. In Jeremiah 1:5, God tells his prophet, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” Jeremiah 1:10 states, “See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.” Every step this brotha has taken in the last thirty years has been ordered by The One Most High.

Eight years ago, Barack Obama was a minor state legislator nobody had ever heard of. He gamely took on the State Comptroller and a Multi-Millionaire Businessman for the chance to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate. Heavily outspent, he vanquished them both. Plucked from obscurity by John Kerry to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, he electrified the nation. Two opponents, including his attractive Republican opponent, self-destructed in sex-scandals. Smears, misinformation and right-wing distortions, many of the same we hear today, were employed by an unhinged Republican to stop his rise. None worked. Four years later he went on to defeat the most formidible political dynasty the Democratic Party has ever produced to claim the Democratic nomination for President. The Clintons questioned his fitness for the Presidency and Bill Clinton dismissed his ambition as a “fairytale” and prompted Teddy Kennedy to endorse Obama after letting rip, “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.” Oh, how the worm has turned. President and Mrs. Clinton both serve at Obama’s pleasure now.

We love him because he has always displayed the cool serenity and regal dignity that every child of God should emulate. This is the same president that shamed Donald Trump on Wednesday, punked his ass contemptuously on Saturday, and killed Bin Laden on Sunday. Don’t believe for one minute that an empty suit like Mitt Romney got under our president’s skin last night. Don’t fall for that. Obama set a trap and Romney took the bait. Romney shook his etch-a-sketch so hard that he broke it. This is the same president that allowed Republican extremism and obstructionism to trap them into the untenable position of opposing tax cuts, a grand bargain on deficit reduction and a debt limit extension. To hear some pundits tell it, Obama doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he always seems to come out on top.

Romney still has much to answer for. The specificity of his budget and tax plan that journalists and pundits were critical of earlier in the week sure as hell didn’t materialize last night. What we heard was a lot of nonsensical doubletalk and backpedalling from what he was saying during the primaries. The Obama for America campaign is sure to take a hefty pound of flesh from Romney for his evasions and falsehoods. The ads should pretty much write themselves. All one has to do is stack Romney’s inconsistencies on top of one another and call it a damn day.

The corporate media knows that this race was over a long time ago. It doesn’t want to give up the ghost just yet because it invests the empty theatrics and ridiculous posturing of the modern presidential debate with more meaning than the serious policy discussions it was designed to facilitate. The contention that stagecraft means more than statecraft is a serious indictment of our fourth estate and an indication that the systemic corruption beneath the Media’s shiny façade threatens our democracy. We need to continue working, watching and praying for healing and racial reconciliation in our country.

There is a hymn that goes, “We’ve come this far by faith. Leaning on the Lord. Trusting in His holy word… Just the other day I heard someone say he didn’t believe in God’s word. But I can truly say that God has made a way. And He’s never failed me yet. That’s why we’ve come this far by faith.”

As the nation sits on the precipice of default and worldwide Depression, my frustration with progressives has turned from annoyance to blind rage. The delusional fantasy that Barack Obama can wave a magic wand, part the Red Sea, and create progressive change with the stroke of a pen, just won’t die. And it frustrates the hell out of me. I understand the mindset intimately because I was there. This presidency is a unique moment in American history and it has fueled the idealism of the American people. That’s a good thing. However, it has also unleashed a tsunami of unrealistic expectations.

Our system of government is designed to frustrate reform and change, especially progressive change. Whatever change we manage to get is ALWAYS incremental and a foundation that can be built upon. I thought that was widely understood. I was wrong.

Anybody who hasn’t been under a rock for the last few weeks understands that there is no reasoning with the Republicans on Capitol Hill or anywhere else. David Brooks said it best:

… the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative. The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch to cut government by a yard, they will still say no.

The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities. A thousand impartial experts may tell them that a default on the debt would have calamitous effects, far worse than raising tax revenues a bit. But the members of this movement refuse to believe it.

…If the debt ceiling talks fail, independent voters will see that Democrats were willing to compromise but Republicans were not. If responsible Republicans don’t take control, independents will conclude that Republican fanaticism caused this default. They will conclude that Republicans are not fit to govern.

And they will be right.

Given the ruinous catastrophe that the country faces, I find it maddening that some progressives think that the president is going to be able to achieve anything worthwhile as long as Republicans control the House of Representatives. Didn’t we learn this lesson 16 years ago when Bill Clinton was president? After Clinton’s re-election the GOP doubled down on the crazy. Bill Clinton was immensely flattered to be considered the first black president and the Republicans resolved that any white male that would cop to that should be treated like a nigger. That’s what the humiliation of impeachment was ultimately about and they haven’t changed. The thin veneer of solidarity with African Americans and other people of color displayed by our party leaders renders the Right-Wing constitutionally incapable of accepting any Democratic President’s legitimacy.

Thirteen years later, the president who saved us from Depression, secured comprehensive health reform, and reversed DADT without embarrassing his wife, his family, and the nation with sordid details of oval office fellatio, can’t seem to do anything right for the people who vigorously defended the philanderer-in-chief who got all of that progressive policy wrong in addition to weakening the social safety net and deregulating the banks that speculated us into the current predicament. In the African American community, there is an aphorism that we are taught as children: We have to be twice as good to get half as much. True to form, Barack Obama is twice as good as Bill Clinton ever was and doesn’t even get half the credit.

I’m tired of the cacophony of criticism from the firebagger caucus that President Obama is somehow defective. He’s the most effective president on domestic policy since LBJ. Unlike Charlie Sheen, Barack Obama IS winning, which I think is the realization fueling the Republican drive to blow up the economy and his presidency so they can play blame-a-nigga games during the 2012 Presidential election.

The fact that firebaggers refuse to acknowledge the latent racism behind Republican machinations blocking a raise in the debt ceiling reveals that Republicans are not the only ones with a race problem they need to own up to. The need for Barack Obama to be perfection personified before some progressives can trust and applaud his leadership is delusional at best. At worst it is racist and it is time we had an adult conversation about that. His election has not exorcised the demon of racism in this country and relieves no one of their moral obligation to continue supporting fairness and equal opportunity.

If President Obama has a failing, it is that he refuses to acknowledge that truth and the racism behind the animus he faces from the Republicans. Whatever. I’ll support him regardless because nobody in my lifetime has demonstrated that they’re more worthy of being President.

“Today we have lost the comfort of Elizabeth’s presence but she remains the heart of this family. We love her and will never know anyone more inspiring or full of life,” the statement said.

Edwards was first diagnosed with breast cancer and treated in 2004. In 2007, the cancer returned and spread.

She wrote two best-selling books, “Resilience” and “Saving Graces,” about her battle with cancer and the scandal surrounding her husband, a wealthy trial lawyer who served as a U.S. senator from North Carolina and twice ran for president.

President Barack Obama in a statement called her “a tenacious advocate for fixing our health care system and fighting poverty,” and said the county “has benefited from the voice she gave to the cause of building a society that lifts up all those left behind.”

John Edwards’ personal and political fortunes changed after the National Enquirer, a tabloid newspaper, began reporting on his affair with a campaign aide named Rielle Hunter as he sought the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Elizabeth Edwards and her husband announced in January 2010 that they had separated after 32 years of marriage.

On December 6, 2010, she said in a Facebook posting: “I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces, my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope.”

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When I last posted, the topic of conversation was Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee. The last time I wished to post was around the same time the Eddie Long controversy broke. Then I got sidetracked. I’ll get back to those topics ASAP, but what occurs to me today is that Deval Patrick is presidential timber. If he wins in November, and it looks dicey right now, he could mount a campaign to succeed President Obama. This question of succession is one that has concerned me for some time even though it is decidedly premature.

Two people immediately came to mind, neither was Hillary Clinton. Both were women. Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Senator Claire McCaskill are two logical choices in my view of logical successors to Obama. First, both endorsed him over Hillary Clinton, and both are younger than she is. Both women are centrists. Both women are natural executives and highly decisive people. McCaskill, the conservative of the two, is a radical centrist and her Senate votes are a little more to the center right than I am comfortable with, but it positions her perfectly for re-election and a national run.

Claire is articulate, no nonsense and a commanding presence. My favorite example of her leadership style is the way she scolded an enormous crowd during a health care forum for their churlish disrespect. She came across as an angry mother that one should be wary of attempting to cross. McCaskill credits one of her daughters for pushing her to endorse Senator Obama and reassess his potential to lead the nation. Today, if I had that child’s ear, I’d be whispering that she should be telling her mom to prepare herself to run for president.

Janet Napolitano, by contrast, is the single and childless professional woman that Americans have been bred to fear. Napolitano is a kind of female Obama because she is a trailblazer. The first Democratic woman to be elected Governor in the Southwest, she was also the first woman appointed both U.S. Attorney and elected Attorney General. She is now the first woman to become Secretary of Homeland Security. The agents of patriarchy tell us that we have something to fear from such a woman as Napolitano because she apparently is fearless, competent, but more importantly, single and childless. Stepping into the role of national father as President will supposedly be problematic for her. With a fairly deep and resonant voice, she oozes authority. She even sounds Presidential. I can think of no real problems with her being President and can think of no woman better prepared for the job of leader of the free world.

Neither of these women, however, leads with her heart. Neither is known as a progressive. At my core, that is who I am, and that is who I want to lead my country. If I ever write a book, it will not be about Harold Ford, Jr. It will be about making the case for electing a progressive to the White House. That is the book I was meant to write, not a negative screed, entertaining though it may have been, about a corporate whore like Ford.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick is the kind of progressive candidate I could enthusiastically get behind. Most of us Negroes never seriously entertained the possibility of electing a black president much less two brothas from Chicago, but Patrick is capable of being elected President because he is so damn talented. First, the brotha is a compelling public speaker that rivals the President in his ability to move people. Second, he is blazing a path of progressive governance that Obama, bless his heart, is not. I do not know what his foreign policy views are, but Deval Patrick would make an excellent President because he is all of the things progressives projected onto Obama that he never was. I respect and admire Barack Obama and will work hard to get him re-elected. However, after two years, I realize that he is not the president I wanted, despite his extraordinary gifts and stunning accomplishments.

For awhile I’ve been telling friends that Obama is the only black president we’ll ever live to see or that there will ever be so we might as well be happy with whatever he does, even though I have not been happy bout a number of things. Today, I feel as I might have been wrong about that, and that gives me hope.

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For the last twenty years I have struggled with a lifelong desire to be a political figure and the realization that American politics is infected with what bell hooks terms “White supremacist capitalist patriarchy.” Trying to navigate shark infested political waters in a way that preserves my integrity has been a tough slog. I’ve tried volunteering on campaigns, I’ve even run some for people I thought brought something special to the public arena. I’ve tried writing and blogging. None of it quite fits me even though I had some success.

I’ve been contacted by national writers from the Washington Post to the Los Angeles Times. During the 2008 campaign I even saw my blog mentioned on CNN. None of it was enough though. I allowed myself to become disillusioned with politics and watched passively as life passed me by.

I need more.

I’ve wasted a lot of time and I’m not getting any younger. Next year when I hit forty I need to fulfill what I’ve always thought was my purpose: running for public office. I ‘ve been obsessed with politics and policy for as long as I can remember and life is too short not to try and make the world a better place. I realize that I am just as fucking flawed as some of the politicians I despise and looking for perfection in this life is a fool’s errand.

I am a progressive that believes in what the good people of Black Agenda Report call “The Black Consensus.” In sum, what that means is that we do no harm to the political, economic and social viability of the black community and that we do our level best to strengthen black institutions. The last thing we need is a dependant and prostrate black community willing to sell out for the crumbs of imperialism.

Capitalism, for the most part, operates to the detriment of people of color. Not always, but mostly. It is the obligation of African American pol’s to level the playing field in any way possible. Some of you will complain that this explicit racial consciousness is un-American, but I can assure you that as a dreadlocked skeptical brotha, nobody allows me to forget my race. The knee-jerk apprehension when I enter white spaces is palpable.

President Obama is the main example of this phenomenon. Since the day it was apparent that he would defeat Hillary Clinton, it has been open season. Conservatives have been ringing the bell and sounding a disturbing racial alarm. The sound and fury of conservatives signifies discomfort with everything Obama symbolizes. They refuse to accept his legitimacy as president and displace that into rhetoric questioning his citizenship, patriotism, and religion and they smear him as a socialist, Marxist, and Muslim.

Their thinly veiled racism and full throated hatred ain’t fooling nobody, honey. They want to “take their country back” from the unwashed hoards of Negroes, Latinos, Asians, and Gays of all persuasions and turn back the clock to a simpler time when they knew their proper places in the underclass.

Some of us have gotten sidetracked the last 18 months worrying about these attacks, but it really isn’t about Obama, it’s about us, people. Obama is just the proxy, y’all, conservatives are attacking progressive progress in general and the black community in particular. Obama is a very flawed politician despite his many gifts. I admire him tremendously, but his penchant for defending an unacceptable status quo and softening the edges of America’s harsh imperialism is not really admirable. TripLBee said it best:

When any President, including this one, glamorizes and sanitizes warfare, I will be offended. I found his speech offensive; especially because he knows he was spouting nonsense. Does he really want his daughters buying into his blather about the sanctity of waging war against the poorest country on the face of the Earth? He is sounding like every other emperor. It’s pathetic.

Lastly, I feel compelled to run because l feel an obligation to do something more than bitch and complain on a keyboard. Some folk can effect positive change that way, but I don’t think that is really my gift.

The President opened the fall campaign in his customary way today with a barn burning speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Continuing the piecemeal approach of incremental change that our political system allows, President Obama announced a plan for $50 billion of infrastructure investment. The plan is weighted heavily toward roads, bridges, high speed rail, smart investments and limited job creation. Shrewdly, he performed the obligatory ass kissing of organized labor to create enthusiasm and excitement for the Democratic ticket in the fall. Moreover, he sold his plan with the customary feel good rhetoric and American Dream cliches.

Obama’s scathing criticism of the failed policies and right-wing propaganda of the Republicans was what some voters needed to hear. Too bad white voters are not listening to reason this year. Republicans understand the power of fear and are using it to their advantage, Democrats should be taking Republicans faces off for their hypocrisy, lies, and distortions on every front. Fear about the future of Social Security is particularly potent, unfortunately, Obama has no credibility on that issue.

Lastly, the President gave what amounted to a middle class call to arms in this address but he’s done precious little to address the foreclosure crisis that is decimating the middle class–particularly the black and brown middle class. We’ll see if it works. What is on your mind today?